Sisters of the Road (17 page)

“I’m in Portland actually. I think Trish is here. I’m looking for her… so dinner’s off tonight, tell Carole, and… I need someone to feed Ernesto while I’m gone.”

“I’m sure as hell not going to feed Ernesto… what do you think, a business runs itself? You come back here right away!”

“I can’t, June, I’ve got to find her. I think someone may have brought her down here. I’ve got to ask her some questions, help her.”

There was a pause. “Well, at least you didn’t die from an overdose. I guess I can be thankful for that. But you be back by Wednesday, hear? Cause we got a big job coming up and I need some help too.”

“Then you’ll feed Ernesto? Thanks a million, June, you’re great.”

“I’m great till Wednesday,” she warned. Then I’m mad.”

Janis returned, in a three-piece suit, a crisp white shirt and blue tie. She carefully placed some papers in her briefcase.

“Decided what you want to do?”

“Just walk around, I guess. Try to see Trish’s father…”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll drop you downtown. Tonight I’ll show you where the prostitutes hang out.”

“Thanks,” I started to say, but she interrupted me.

“We’ll eat dinner at home, if that’s all right with you. I hope you can handle vegetarian food.” She added severely, “Beth couldn’t.”

P
ORTLANDIA BENT DOWN FROM
her ledge two stories up, golden bronze, leaning forward on one knee, grasping a trident in one hand and stretching the other out to me on the ground, as if she wanted to give me a boost up. Her shoulders were massive and powerful, her long hair was flung back and she gleamed like molten lava in the light of the afternoon sun. Behind her the windows reflected and deepened the color of the bright blue sky. You didn’t often see statues that showed a woman’s strength, not her fragility, that showed a woman who looked like she could really do something for you.

The day was cold and the wind bit my neck. In my haste to get out of Seattle I’d forgotten my muffler and hat, though thankfully not my blue mittens.

I stood there looking at Portlandia, thinking over what Janis had said about feminists and prostitution.

In the car I’d told her, “You make it sound like prostitutes, the ones you’ve met, have a choice. But it doesn’t feel like that to me. A lot of them are young girls who’ve been victims of sexual abuse and they go on being victimized.” I was remembering the despair and corrupted sensibility of Trish’s diary, and how the girls in the group had talked about not feeling anything.

“Even victims have a choice,” said Janis, driving very fast. “Survival is a choice and prostitution is a means of economic survival. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a psychological price to be paid. But you pay a price when you work at McDonald’s for minimum wage and have to wear those ridiculous uniforms. Society punishes prostitutes and so of course they suffer. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

“You think prostitution should be legalized then?”

“Not legalized!” The MG shot over the bridge like a bullet fired low to the ground. “That would mean the state would intervene and control it. It’s legal in Germany, for instance, and what you get are Eros Hotels, legalized brothels that make huge profits for the men who own them. The women are practically prisoners—they see dozens of men a day, they can’t set their own hours, some of them can’t even leave their rooms.” Janis impatiently tucked a wisp of brown hair behind her ears and raced through a yellow light. “No, I’m talking about just leaving prostitutes alone, about decriminalization. Just stop arresting them. Do you know that thirty percent of all women in the prison system are in for prostitution? Do you know how much it costs to arrest and try each woman? The city of Portland spent over three-quarters of a million dollars last year arresting and rearresting prostitutes. It’s just a waste of money.”

She stopped at a red light, stopped on a dime.

“What’s the crime if a woman sleeps with a man for money? He gets what he wants sexually, she gets what she needs economically. Why should the state in the guise of public morality intervene? It’s all hypocrisy anyway. Everyone knows that prostitution will continue no matter how many laws you make or unmake. The politicians are some of the prostitutes’ best customers.”

“But that’s just it,” I said, trying to grab hold of an argument and feeling almost defeated before I began by her energy. “Why is the institution of prostitution always seen as something that’s always been there and always will be? It just feeds into the myth that men are these insatiable sexual creatures whose needs have got to be met. Legally or illegally, that’s not really the question. As long as we accept the idea that men need prostitutes, we accept the idea that women are responsible for men’s sexuality. Women are responsible for their
own
sexuality—why aren’t men? Why is men’s sexuality something that has to be catered to and supplied on demand as a ‘service’?”

Janis screeched to a stop in front of the new Justice Center. “You’re bucking thousands of years of history with that little question.”

“Well, so is feminism,” I said as I squeezed out.

“Don’t forget, it’s vegetarian food tonight. So stock up on your hamburgers this afternoon.”

She roared away with a wave, leaving me standing on the sidewalk muttering, “But you didn’t tell me where to find the goddamn McDonald’s.”

I wandered around the river city, up one street and down the next, not sure if I was looking for Trish or just looking, and finally ended up in Burnside. This was Portland’s skid road, now in the process of being renovated. Expensive restaurants and boutiques nestled next to abandoned storefronts and corner grocers; in front of them small crowds of street people hung out, or stood in line for a hot meal at one of the missions. It reminded me of photos I’d seen of the Depression: long lines of men, beaten down and patient, waiting for the soup kitchen to open. There weren’t many women and only a few teenage girls, most of them Black or Indian. It was odd; when I thought of Depression photographs I mainly remembered images of men. Where had the women been? Where were they now? At home with the kids, in shelters or cheap rooming houses. Just as needy, but invisible.

Some of Burnside’s streets hadn’t been touched by gentrification and were a lonely series of boarded-up shops and miserable taverns. But on Sixth I saw a small storefront with a frosting of old Christmas decorations in the window and a sign: Sisters of the Road Cafe.

I walked across the street and went inside, a little hesitantly. It wasn’t much: a counter and tables for about twenty customers. At the counter was a woman and a few men. The men were dressed in layers of torn clothing, in shoes with worn heels and flapping soles; unbrushed, unwashed, with scraggly beards. The woman was better looking, but she had a rundown air. It was hard to know how old she was—twenty-five, thirty-five. She was wearing a skirt and thin sweater, high patent leather boots that were cracked at the toe.

“The special’s chili for eighty-five cents,” the waitress who came over to my table said. “We’ve also got rice, beans and cheese.” She was stocky in a faded chef’s apron over jeans and a plaid shirt, one of those people who seem firmly rooted to the ground, like a small tree. Her dark hair was long and bushy and she had heavy eyebrows and a generous mouth.

“I’ll take a bowl of the chili, I guess. And some coffee.”

I kept looking at the woman at the counter. She was slumped over a cup of coffee, her peroxided hair pulled back into a limp ponytail; her face, from my angle, was sweet, soft and puffy, like a bowl of whipped cream just starting to settle. She had a fresh bruise under one eye.

I was still thinking about my conversation with Janis. I wondered what she really felt, emotionally, about prostitution. I wondered what I felt.

Powerful, Carole had said. Nasty. It was both, it was neither. It was all tangled up in my mind with legend and literature. Japanese geishas,
Irma la Douce
, Colette’s demi-monde, Xaviera Hollander, and Lola Montez. Seductive images that warred with other pictures: diseased, nameless hags standing in doorways, displayed in street windows, greasy, toothless women reeking of gin. History and novels gave you both: the myth of the
grand horizontal
, sensual, charming, clever, and the myth of the harlot, the scarlet woman, the whore, the most pitiful and despicable creature on earth. Men said you were one or the other; somehow you suspected you might be both. All the same you chose. Good girl, bad girl.

The waitress came over with my chili.

“You from around here?”

“Seattle.”

“Just traveling?”

“No. I’m looking for a girl, a friend of mine, a kid really.”

She nodded, straightening a chair slightly. “We don’t get too many street kids in here. Some, but mainly it’s the Burnside regulars.”

I felt a sudden urge to confide, but I didn’t know what. Maybe that I was a little lost and lonely, that I didn’t know where Trish was or why Rosalie had to die, or what would happen to Trish if I didn’t find her.

She stood there waiting, sturdy and gentle.

“Why Sisters of the Road?” I finally asked.

“We had a project called Boxcar Berthas for transient women and the cafe came out of that. We wanted to make a safe place for women.” The waitress smiled and the smile was warm and easy and kind. She wasn’t going to press me. “Boxcar Bertha was a hobo who wrote a book,
Sister of the Road.
She was into helping other women, she knew what it was like. Enjoy your chili.”

She went back to the counter and started refilling coffee cups, joking a little with the men. The woman with the bruise didn’t talk; she seemed sunk in some private hell. Exhaustion perhaps, or misery.

“Fucking bitch!”

The door had swung open and a small Black man in built-up shoes and a suit with wide lapels and padded shoulders stood there. “I been looking all over town for you. Come on.”

The woman at the counter slumped over more deeply and didn’t turn around.

“What’s the problem?” the waitress said calmly. She came out from behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron and stood, solidly planted, between him and the woman.

“Shut up, bitch! This is between me and Louise. Come on, get up and get over here, before I have to drag you.” His face was mean and angry; his voice seethed.

The woman at the counter didn’t move. The men at the counter didn’t either. I half got up and said, “You want me to call the police?”

“No,” said the waitress. She was still standing in the middle of the cafe, large and immovable with her bushy dark hair fanning out over her shoulders. Her voice was mild. “Calm down, mister. Just calm down now. You can go in the kitchen if you want, Louise.”

Louise turned slightly from the counter. “I’m not going with you, Earl.” She was frightened but aggrieved. “Not after what you did.”

“You fucking get off that seat and get out here right away. You’ll go where I tell you to go.” The man didn’t come any nearer, though, and the anger in his face retreated a little, leaving a contempt that was uncertain and cajoling. “Come on, Louise, don’t let this bitch tell you what to do. She doesn’t know about you and me.”

“Earl,” said the waitress, very calm and clear. “Louise is having a cup of coffee. She can stay here as long as she wants.”

She didn’t tell him to go, she didn’t threaten him. She just stood there.

“I’m not leaving, Earl, forget it,” muttered Louise. “Not after what you did.”

All of a sudden his bluster left him. He looked furious, but defeated. “Fucking white bitch,” he said and turned and slammed out the door.

I sat down again.

The waitress sighed and went back behind the counter. I expected her to talk to Louise, to ask her what had happened, to tell her where she could go for help. She didn’t. She said, as if to herself, “This cafe is a safe place, it’s always going to be a safe place.”

I ate my chili. I stayed a little longer than I needed to. Louise was still sitting there when I left.

T
RISH’S FATHER, ART MARGOLIN
, didn’t live far from Janis, in a modest frame house with a neatly kept yard. It was almost sunset when I found the address; the front windows glowed like bars of toffee and a wind chime tinkled a little above the door. A large yellow cat sat on a jute mat on the porch.

My heart lifted as I saw the house. Maybe I’d been worried for nothing. Maybe Trish was here; maybe her father had taken her in and was even now doing something to help and protect her.

I rang the doorbell expectantly. A small Japanese-American woman in a print dress and cardigan sweater opened up.

“I’m Pam Nilsen, from Seattle. Are you Mrs. Margolin?”

She nodded. She wore glasses and a prim, judgmental look.

“I’m looking for Art Margolin. I’d like to talk to him about his daughter, Trish.”

She hesitated slightly, then asked me in. “He’s in the kitchen.”

The house bore unmistakable signs of children. A rocking horse in the living room, toys on the stairs, a baby carriage in the hall. Two kids, a boy of five or six and a girl somewhat younger, were in the kitchen with a tall, heavily built man. He was stirring a pot on the stove and looking at a cookbook while talking to them absentmindedly. A radio was on and the whole scene was exceedingly domestic.

Better and better, I thought; if Trish weren’t here, maybe she should be. Why hadn’t she ever talked about her father?

“Art, this is Pam Nilsen from Seattle. She wants to know something about Patricia.”

Art’s big distracted features focused on me. He had bushy graying eyebrows and a receding hairline; his mouth was slack and unfinished, as if a mason had slapped a smear of mortar between his jowls, and it was still wet and grayish-pink.

“Why, what’s happened to her?”

“She’s disappeared from Seattle. I thought she might have come here. I’m a friend of hers.”

Art and his wife looked at each other. “She wouldn’t have come here,” said the woman matter-of-factly. She shooed the children out into the hall; they stared at me worriedly as they went.

“She might, Judy,” Art said. “She might have changed. Is she in trouble?” He sounded almost hopeful.